{"id":391161,"date":"2024-05-06T04:04:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T04:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=391161"},"modified":"2024-05-06T05:04:22","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T05:04:22","slug":"afl-icon-stunned-by-veterans-diabolical-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=391161","title":{"rendered":"AFL icon stunned by veteran's 'diabolical' act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian football icon Leigh Matthews<\/a> could not believe Jamie Cripps' "diabolical" act which cruelled West Coast<\/a> on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\ufeffThe 15th-placed Eagles were only 10 points down and in the middle of a stirring comeback against Essendon<\/a> when Jake Waterman took a classy mark with nine and a half minutes to play in the final term.<\/p>\n

Waterman looked certain to kick the goal which would have put the home side four points back and with plenty of time to run over the Bombers.<\/p>\n

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But while he lined up his set shot, a scuffle broke out and Cripps shoved young Essendon star Nick Martin to the ground.<\/p>\n

The umpire on the spot blew his whistle and took the ball off Waterman, paying a free kick to Martin.<\/p>\n

\"West<\/p>\n

\ufeffWhile West Coast would kick one more goal for the night the Bombers managed two more behinds to win the contest by six points in a thriller.<\/p>\n

Watching the footage back on Sunday evening, four-time premiership coach Matthews still could not believe what he saw.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffThat is the most diabolical lack of discipline," Matthews told Nine's Footy Furnace<\/em>.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffMy coaching terminology was 'they can hit you with an axe – if we've got (the ball), do nothing'.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffI'd be saying to Cripps that was stupid, that was nothing short of stupid.<\/p>\n

"Don't remonstrate. We've got the ball\ufeff, don't give the umpire any chance to reverse the free kick."<\/p>\n

AFL great Jimmy Bartel agreed.<\/p>\n

\"Essendon<\/p>\n

"\ufeffWhen you've got the ball inside forward 50, the opposition's going to try suck you in," Bartel said.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffYou've just got walk away, kick the goal through, and then if you want to puff your chest out a little bit you can do it.<\/p>\n

"But not while your teammate is having a shot 15 metres out."\ufeff<\/p>\n

The loss left the Eagles with a 2-6 record to start the season.<\/p>\n

They next face Collingwood on Sunday.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian football icon Leigh Matthews could not believe Jamie Cripps' "diabolical" act which cruelled West Coast on Saturday night. \ufeffThe 15th-placed Eagles were only 10 […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":391164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=391161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391170,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391161\/revisions\/391170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/391164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=391161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=391161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=391161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}